Speeches by Creagh.

“The depleted numbers on the Conservative Benches are beginning to make me wonder whether they need some funding to avoid extinction—[Laughter.] I’m here all week! Local nature recovery strategies have been a brilliant vehicle to get these better, bigger, more joined-up landscapes, and I have been in discussion with off…”

“I mentioned in my statement the solar panels for schools, which have had the benefit of cutting bills and providing a resilient electricity supply for those schools. The DFE is investing £710 million to improve the condition of school and college buildings and, crucially, they are part of our Government estate nature p…”

“I look after many things, but sadly I do not yet control the broadcast schedules of any national broadcasters. The point of the National Emergency Briefing is to get people together, a bit like the great organisation that rejoices in the name of People Planet Pint. I have been people, planet and football for most of th…”

“My hon. Friend lives in a particularly beautiful part of the world that has a lot to commend it. We need to take a whole-city approach to the issue. We need to look at our roads. We need to reduce the urban heat island effect, with more tree planting and soft planting, and moving away from the grey concrete. We need mo…”

“I always like to go and see trees being planted, and my hon. Friend is right to talk about the importance of trees, both for shading our streets and as part of the three new national forests, two of which we have already announced. That is why we have more than doubled the grant for trees outside woodland through the T…”

“We are building nine new reservoirs, but further to what my hon. Friend says, I have had messages from Severn Trent Water, who advise me to put a bucket in the bath, get a hosepipe, and do a bit of siphoning of the bathwater to water the garden. There are already three areas with hosepipe bans, and I fear that there ma…”

“Given the intense heatwaves that we have experienced this year and in previous years, it is vital that children in Ashford have the protection of shade from trees. Academy trusts should be making funds available for adaptation, to mitigate impacts in their schools, and to keep their schools open. We do not want childre…”

“We have the biodiversity net gain framework, which is all about making sure that there is a biodiversity uplift of 10% in every planning policy. It was a brand-new policy left to us by the previous Government, but it was not working perfectly—nothing is born perfect—so we have made some changes to make it more proporti…”

“My hon. Friend’s year 2s at St Michael’s show that you are never too young to start caring about the environment, but it is important that we nurture and protect that climate awareness and eco awareness. Often as kids go into secondary school, they can lose that. I am excited that we will have a new GCSE in natural his…”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the subject of peatlands and their role in hydrological protection. He raises the same point as the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) did about Calderdale, but from a completely different direction. We know that peatlands have this important role to play. The…”

“I pay tribute to everyone who is helping with the restocking. My hon. Friend is lucky to have a river so close to London that has such a sensitive and rare species as the European eel in it. It is important that perpetrators of environmental crimes are brought to justice swiftly, but it is also important that any case …”

“We are having a triple-COP year. We will be setting out our approach and our achievements as we move towards the biodiversity COP in Armenia and the climate COP in Turkey. There is also an important desertification COP taking place in Mongolia, which is on the frontline of the climate crisis as the permafrost there col…”

“As I mentioned before, we are more than doubling the funding for tree planting through the trees outside woodland fund. Climate change is sexist: it seems to be that women are particularly affected, and because of our body composition, we are less able to reduce our core heat, so we need to look at specific policies to…”

“I will be travelling to Fylingdales this week to make an announcement about what we are doing to help those brave farmers who are on the frontline of that wildfire.”

“My hon. Friend asks a great question. I said earlier that climate change is sexist; it also hits the poorest harder—a point he makes well. As we look towards the future, as well as thinking about offering warm spaces through our local government colleagues and councils, we also need to start looking at offering cool an…”

“We know that we need to experiment with agroforestry, and that we need to do farming differently in this country, but sometimes it is about going back to the old ways of farming, with mixed arable crops and cattle and sheep, to get back that grassland; and about re-wiggling the waters. I was talking today about the blo…”

“The climate security taskforce is part of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s remit, so I can ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero to talk to my hon. Friend about that. The report that he mentions says that analysis shows there is “high confidence” that “ecosyst…”

“Again, my hon. Friend tempts me beyond my brief. Given that most local authorities have declared a climate and nature crisis, it strikes me that her suggestion is an excellent topic for the Youth Parliament—or local youth panels could be organised through schools.”

“I commend my hon. Friend on getting through that quickly. She tempts me to go beyond my brief, and on to the subject of battery and solar energy. Solar installations can result in biodiversity net gains of up to 300%; there can be farmland, sheep-grazing grassland and solar alongside each other, and that can provide ex…”

“My hon. Friend is right to say that we have seen a big flip-flop from the Conservatives. I am old enough to remember when, back in 2019, they put net zero into law under Theresa May and she described it as a Conservative mission. Now their leader says that the very same target is “impossible”, so which Conservative par…”